Pussy Riot - latest

On appeal the sentence on Yekaterina Samutsevich (who did not, in fact, take part in the famous or infamous  "punk prayer") has been suspended. The other two will serve it in full.

There were cheers in court when the two-year jail term of Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was suspended. 

Earlier the trio spoke defiantly at the appeal hearing, saying their protest song was political and not anti-Church.

Not anti-Church, maybe, and not anti-religion, certainly but the protest was anti the Church hierarchy, which is far too close to the Putin regime. Historians of Russia and of the later part of the Soviet Union would argue that there is nothing unusual in that.